


There is no friend as loyal as a book.

by Amy_Isabella



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Literary References & Allusions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 06:43:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amy_Isabella/pseuds/Amy_Isabella
Summary: A look at the relationship between Jess Mariano and Rory Gilmore through a series of quotes from their favourite books.Non-linear jump through moments in the show and beyond.Title - Ernest Hemingway.





	1. Kerouac

**Author's Note:**

> 2.5  
> Kerouac

Dark skinned, old, long greying dreadlocks, a still somewhat copper beard, and curved wrinkles on his face that stood out as his booming laugh echoed down the bus and he slapped his knees jovially.

That man had gotten off two stops after he’d got on.

Purple hair, half of it jagged and shaved, the other cascading down her back in almost unrealistic ringlets. Her face cleared of anything false – makeup, piercings, not even a hint of a scar, except one tattoo that reached from under her shaved hair and tickling the centre of her cheekbone as an elaborate flower.

She’d exited an hour into the journey, and Jess almost followed her off with his curiosity.

Glasses, a crisply ironed suit, a briefcase and newspaper, middle-aged and a tan-line on his wedding finger. He was smiling as he leant against the window, pretending to read the financial section of the news, but his eyes were closed and his headphones blaring the music of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” on repeat.

He had jolted out of his seat and ran for the door minutes before the bus set off again on its final leg of the journey.

Jess slipped down in his seat, his legs up against the one in front of him and Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ open in his hand – his notes scribbled over every blank space in that book, and he grimaced at the irony of the book he had grabbed.

This was one bus journey that he was sure Sal Paradise would have despised. It seemed that every interesting person had found their spot far before Stars Hollow was even considered on the itinerary. All that were left were old pensioners with canes and false teeth, spitting and drooling as they spoke. Or crisply dressed business men and women who were ignoring everybody be staring blankly at the seat patterns in front of them.

He'd been on the bus for too long, looking for hope amongst Kerouac’s words, but no matter how many time the man romanticized his time on the road, the new people to be met at each corner and the way the sun lit the sky in a new and completely different way as another field went by, Jess couldn’t feel optimistic.

_Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road._

The book didn’t fool him. He knew that he was on this bus for reasons beyond his control. He was being forced to live with a stranger because his mother had considered him one. He was leaving behind his comfortable chaos for this uncomfortable suburbia.

With the sun beating down hard on his face, and the threat of the looming boredom that will become of his life ever-closer, Jess settled further down into the seat and placed the book over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.

Kerouac. What a Lying son of a bitch.


	2. Tolstoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jess see's her through a window at an opportune moment in his reading.

The cigarette dangled loosely in his hand, the stick hanging outside as he sat on the window-sill, his knees crouched up to his face and the book he was reading resting carefully on his knees. The air was cold as it drifted in through the window, and the silence of the street made it feel like each page he turned echoed through the town.

Jess had to admit it he had come to find it relaxing.

When he had first gotten to Stars Hollow, the town that would have made Richard Yates cry, he found the silence of night unnerving. Usually, silence meant trouble in New York. When it was quiet, you knew there was something to fear. It was difficult readjusting and once again becoming comfortable to the complete lack of noise, and with it lack of drama, intrigue, or scandal. In its place was just a whole lot of mundanity and quiet.

Sitting there, watching as the late-night stragglers returned home to their abodes at, _gasp,_ nine-thirty in the evening, Jess concluded that the town was, admittedly, a whack-job, but it did offer the perfect setting for his preferred escapism. 

Turning back to his vehicle of choice to somewhere far from where he was, he pulled the cigarette to his lips and inhaled sharply and deeply, letting his hand dart back out of the window to dispose of the ash he’d created in its wake. He let the smoke out carefully, letting it dance from his lips as his tongue ran over his teeth to savour the taste and his eyes slipped over the page to savour the words.

Tolstoy spoke to him, and already covered in his own notes, Jess felt like the book was reading him rather than the other way around. He’d journeyed up to the apartment after Luke had dismissed him, and like everything else was drowned out, he’d picked up Anna Karenina and had been there ever since.

He’d reached the ninth chapter, reading intently as he lazily danced the cigarette through his fingers;

_The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might come there to skate. –_

With the ring of the diner bell below and the bellowing of laughs, the image faded from his mind and Jess was sucked back into reality by the sound of _her_ voice. The enigma in the town of enigma’s.

“I knew coffee after Grandma’s was a bad idea.”

“Excuse me? Who are you and what have you done with my child? Coffee after spending any night with my mother is a necessity.”

“Not when you should be awake at 5am tomorrow morning, you’ll be bouncing off the walls – it’ll be like the great sugar fiasco of ’89.”

“Then coffee will also be a necessity in the morning, which honestly, my child, is nothing but consistent.”

Jess watched the mother and daughter walk the short distance across the road from Luke’s and towards their Jeep. Their posh dresses getting thrown around them as the cool wind seemed to pick up, a clear indication of their Friday night commitments that Jess had quickly become privy to. Lorelai opened the driver door, jumping in and bouncing in her seat as she continued the conversation with her daughter with frankly unfathomable enthusiasm.

Jess brought the cigarette to his lips, the pencil whose home usually sat behind his ear, taking the place of his smoking appendage between his fingers, all done as a matter of subconscious as his eyes drifted from the elder Gilmore to the younger.

His eyes met blue and he caught himself startling back slightly at the connection before quickly letting the smirk he knew frustrated her fall onto his cigarette-filled lips. He raised the hand which wielded the pencil up in a slight wave of acknowledgment, inwardly beaming when he saw her falter at being actively caught looking. When she smiled back at him, the sight as clear to him as if she were standing a foot away, and lifted her hand in just a slight a wave, his smirk may have become more of a grin.

She got into the car, her eyes flicking back to him as her mother drove them home, Jess’s following closely.

Letting his head fall back roughly, the pain of the wall sending a jolt through his system and a groan leaving his mouth at his idiocy – the smoke billowing out with it, he turned back to the book and almost laughed.

_He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking._

He underlined the passage until lines bled graphite over the page and crumbs obscured words.


	3. Huxley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A book recommendation reveals some uncomfortable truths.

The diner was somewhat busy, every table and booth was taken, with only a few chairs left on the counter. The Gilmore girls had their usual favourite, and were chatting enthusiastically as they waited on their food.

Despite this, Jess leant against the counter, his elbows slipping occasionally on the polished surface, a book held in his hand and he was entirely engrossed in the words. He didn’t notice Luke manoeuvre around him, nor the sly looks he was receiving. He didn’t notice the way Kirk looked at him nervously, or Lorelai huffing at his laziness. He certainly didn’t notice Rory glance at him, a smile on her face, and an intense want to find out what he was reading.

“He does that a lot doesn’t he?”

“Hm,” Rory glanced quickly to her mother and noticed with some surprise that her comment was based on the same subject of her scrutiny. “Do what?”

“Read.” Lorelai said the word as if it was disgusting.

“Now I know you’re just trying to find something to hate about him.”

“I am not!”

“I read. I don’t hear you complaining.”

“You read _after_ you’ve done everything you should have done.”

Rory just shook her head, smiling as Luke placed the plates of food down in front of her and her mother, and proceeded to ignore the almost sickening display of her mother flirting. She looked back to Jess. He held the book open with one hand, the other pulling at his bottom lip, twisting and turning the corner as the passage he read appeared to become more engrossing. She watched as the hand from his lip moved up to behind his ear and pulled out a pencil that she hadn’t noticed from where it lay comfortably. He smiled as he pushed the book flat onto the counter and underlined something with the same concentration that Rory usually put into her homework. Next to the passage, he seemed to scribble into the margins and Rory couldn’t help but smile when she realised he was making notes like he did in her ‘Howl’. Content with his work, he slipped the pencil back behind his ear and returned to reading.

“That’s it.” Luke’s grumble was heard from behind the counter, and Lorelai nudged Rory to watch the situation unfold like she hadn’t already been watching the subject of his frustration.

Luke stomped over, and without even missing a step, he slipped the book from Jess’s grip – ignoring the exclamation from his nephew as he did so, and whacked the book over the boy’s head, throwing it back onto the counter in the same flurry. “Hey, Rain Man, stop loitering and actually do some work.” Luke thrust the coffee pot into Jess’ now empty hands and gestured around the diner to show the many waiting patrons and their empty mugs.

Jess shook his head, partly from the hit, partly to try and place himself back into reality, accepting the coffee pot belligerently. “You need to brush up on your references, man. Rain Man doesn’t even begin to make sense.” He grumbled, reaching down the counter to pick up the book that Luke had been so haphazard with and carefully putting it into his pocket for safe keeping.

“You’d be surprised, Jess.” Luke quipped back and rushed to the kitchen before Jess could even consider a counter.

Moving around the room, Jess filled up the cups of those who were looking particularly frustrated, using the remainder of the coffee, before he put on another batch, slightly stronger than usual, with the intent of serving the Gilmores next.

He rung up a few customers at the till, not bothering to be neighbourly and ask about their meals – not that any of them would expect him to. He was just about to pick up the coffee pot and head toward the Gilmore’s when his uncle came hurrying out of the stock room and swept it away, heading toward them and taking Lorelai’s praise of him like a puppy slobbering over a new toy.

Jess rolled his eyes, settling back against the wall and pulling the book back out of his pocket – if his Uncle had time to talk, then he had time to escape.

He’d only gotten a few sentences in when a voice interrupted world he was falling back in to.

“Any chance you could come back to Earth for a moment and get me a muffin?”

Jess couldn’t help the grin that appeared on his face at her words, but he chose to play for a moment longer than necessary, “I am on Earth.” His eyes remained on his book as he spoke, going over the last few paragraphs over and over as he tried to keep the world vivid in his mind.

Rory read the title of the book and knew that she recognised the title – just one on her ‘to read’ list, rather than the ‘already read’. “Fine then, could you please return to the present 2002 and get me a muffin?”

Jess brought the book away from his face, placing it on the counter and making an elaborate show of getting her the muffin from the display case, placing it daintily on a napkin. She watched on amused.

“Where were you then?” She asked as he handed her the food.

“London 2540.” He answered casually, distinctly aware that the conversation to outsiders might just seem a bit crazy, and getting a flourish of elatedness through his chest at the insider dealings he was having with Rory.

She nodded, grinning, pulling the book, A Brave New World, towards her from where he’d left it on the counter. “Any good?”

“You haven’t read it yet?”

She shook her head and Jess couldn’t help but tease, “A book the great Miss Gilmore hasn’t read? My god, the world must be ending.”

“Shut up Jess.” She said simply, chewing on her muffin and flicking through the pages – admiring the notes he had written sparsely but intently across the pages.

He leaned down onto the counter next to her, his elbows parallel to hers. “It’s brilliantly morbid.” He explained, “Everyone is happy and it’s incredibly unnerving.”

“Sounds like your kind of book.”

He grinned at her quip and paused as he watched her fingers dance over the pencilled notes in the margins, “You can borrow it if you want.”

“Jess,” She pulled her elbows back, looking at him with such an intensity one would think he’d offered her his kidney, “I can’t take your book.”

“I took yours, didn’t I?” He smirked, “Honestly,” he pushed the book into her hands, chuckling as she rearranged her muffin so that she could hold onto it with the care one holds a child, “I’ve finished it. And I’d like to hear the other side’s perspective.”

“The other side?”

“Y’know,” He shrugged, “A happy person.”

She looked shock as though he’d voluntary revealed something about himself, or at least how he thought about himself, and with a jolt realised that he had. “Happy on the Gilmore scale, Manic on the average,” he attempted to cover himself. Although from he felt like he was drowning in a beautifully clear ocean by the intensity of her eyes, he knew he hadn’t deflected anything.

“Of course,” she said regardless. “ _Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know,_ ” she quoted, a toothy grin on her face at the response she got from him.

He ducked his head, trying to hide the smile on his face, but the corners of his mouth were too wide and lingering to be mistaken, “I knew Hemmingway would win you over eventually.”

“You were right. He has lovely quotes amongst his masochistic ramblings,” She shook her head at his raised eyebrow and got back to the book he was attempting to leave her with, “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to read it thought Jess, and I wouldn’t want to keep it from you. Especially with your notes inside, and I know _I_ like to go back and read things again just as soon as I’ve finished and I’d hate to deprive you of – “

“Just take the damn book, Gilmore.”

She cut of abruptly and gauged his smirk with an eyebrow raise of equal frustration to him.

“Come on, kid, we’ve got to bounce.” Her mother shouted from their table, throwing on her coat and thrusting her head to the side to get them out of the diner. Rory rolled her eyes at her mother’s incessant need to keep her from any conversation with the boy opposite and she turned back to him with a small smile.

“See ya, Mariano.” And she glided from the stool and out of the door. The world in which he’d spent the last day clutched tightly in her hands, and Jess couldn’t help but think how fitting it was.

___

Rory escaped to her bedroom with claims of homework and an unyielding dictatorship by the name of Paris Geller. Her mother waved her off with a kiss and dramatically exclaimed her fatigue as she rushed up for her own nightly routine, separating the mother and daughter earlier than usual for the evening.

She did attempt to complete some of the textbook readings, but her eyes kept wandering to the book she had carried all the way home. The front cover was folding back from the stress that Jess often exerts on his books, and the pencilled notes that he’d jotted throughout were calling for her – to give some semblance of understanding in the workings of Jess Mariano’s hidden psyche.

She almost dived for it when she made the decision, settling into bed with the singular lamp on next to her and her pyjamas on, ready to settle in and get some of it read before bed that night.

20:00. 22:00. 00:00. 1:00

For hours she soaked up the words of the dystopian story disguised as a utopia, and the snarky, witty, intelligent, and thought-provoking notes next to some of the more intriguing passages from the boy she had come to call Dodger in her mind. She fell asleep mid-word somewhere around the 16th chapter of 18. Desperate to continue but her eyes finally giving in to their strain.

When her mother burst into her room the next morning, both running late for their respective days, Rory barely had enough time to brush her teeth before they bolted out of the door, unable to make time for the coffee and breakfast they had come to depend upon. Instead, Rory sat on the bench waiting for her bus which was due to arrive in the next few moments and greedily drank in the last few chapters.

She paused in the penultimate. Pushing her eyes back to read over a passage and consider the pencilled notes that were the last of the book – so, she deduced, the ones he had most likely been making yesterday afternoon.

_“Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.”_

_“But I like the inconveniences.”_

_“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”_

_“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”_

_“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”_

_“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”_

Next to the passage, which he had underlined carefully, Jess had written – ‘Life’s worth is based on the fear of the unknown, the excitement of the new and the option to push past the comfortable to sin. Who wants to be comfortable when you could have all-consuming.’

The face of Dean popped into her head at the description of comfortable, and Rory caught herself almost violently twisting around to search through the diner at the other face in her head. Her cheeks reddened at her mind’s insinuations, and deepened as she saw him slip out of the diner and towards school.

He hadn’t seen her. He looked around at the courtyard, stepping out into the road and folding another book in his hands, the spine bending at his will. He didn’t start looking over the pages until he was far across the quarter, and without danger of bumping in to anyone, nor a car bumping into him. He seemed to saunter wherever he went, oozing a confidence that suggested he never needed to look up from his book to know that people would step out of his way rather than the other way around. Rory watched every step that he took, her mouth hanging open as if he had staggered up to her, shouted to words of his musings in her face, and swept away just as mysteriously.

The bus horn went off and Rory jumped, visibly cringing as she hit her elbow against the bench, and the book momentarily falling from her grip. She gathered herself together, picking up her belongings and rushing onto the bus, apologising as she went and cursing herself at her few moments of insanity.

She took off her scarf, then her coat, then her jumper, fanning herself with the book. Surrounding her were shivering commuters, still dressed in their thick winter coats, all grumbling comments that she failed to hear in her deaf ears about the blasting air-conditioning stuck on high.

She suddenly felt very hot.


	4. Hemmingway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occurs after "A Tisket a Tasket" where Rory is attempting to hold up her end of the bargain.

He saw her reading sometimes, sat on the bench waiting for her bus to pick her up and take her to Chilton. She often had this small smile on her face as she read, as if there were no place she’d rather be. Surrounded by people moving from foot to foot, rubbing their hands together incessantly and grumbling about the lateness of the bus as their breath filled out visibly in front of them. She sat peacefully, pulling at a piece of hair that would fall in front of her face, her legs often crossed to elevate the positioning of her hands, and her fingers would caress the corners of the pages like an insecure lover.

He often found himself fading away during those mornings, staring out of the window and standing idly against the counter. Luke would berate him, shouting remarks to anyone who would listen about Jess’ apparent inability to concentrate that early in the morning, or how Luke didn’t need another pillar in the place to hold up the roof despite Jess doing a “fine job,” of it himself.

Jess would roll his eyes, think of the early mornings he would wake up in New York to admire to subtle change from drunken late night ramblings to busy working rushes, and start serving the coffee before he’d venture off to school.

Dean was often there waiting for her when she returned, so he didn’t bother to focus as much in the afternoons. There were times, however, when she would get off the bus, breath in with a smile on her face, and venture towards the diner where she’d wait on her mother to finish work with a book in her hand and unlimited coffee at her service.

He’d catch himself smiling as he cleaned the dishes on those days, and had to fight down the urge for fear that neighbourly townsfolk would fool his good mood for a chance at some conversation.

As he prepped the coffee in the pot, neglecting to respond to his uncle as he complained and grumbled about his business, Jess snuck a glance at Rory who was sat at the counter, her giant schoolbag dumped next to her – forcing Luke to take an exaggerated step over it as he passed, her bottom lip chewed and a furrow in her brow, he couldn’t help but grin.

He slid the freshly brewed cup of coffee towards her, ignoring the signals he saw from other waiting patrons. “How is Hemmingway treating you?”

She groaned, throwing her head back dramatically and spinning it back around to face him, “You better leave the pot here – I’m falling asleep as I sit.”

“Oh come on!” He complained, sounding like a petulant child who’d been refused candy.

“I’m serious, Jess. I don’t think I can do this.”

“I got through Ayn Rand, you going to back out of your promise?”

“I promised to try, and I am.”

“Hm,” He smirked, pouring the coffee into her cup, “I still think you’d owe me.”

She huffed, sitting upright and pulling the book back towards her, making a show of attempting to read the contents. He bent down slightly so that he could read whichever Hemmingway she had decided to start on. He grinned, noting _A Farewell to Arms_ and shuffled through the quotes he had memorised from the very beginning of his teenage years.

Settling forward so that he could peer over the book and glance at the page she was attempting to read, he grabbed her mug from beside her and said “ _Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”_ And with that he took a sip from her mug of coffee, his eyebrows raised in some unspoken challenge and his teeth showing behind the smirk that she hated.

He could see that she was taken aback, her eyes flickered over his and in less than an instant over his face until they settled back and stared into his dark eyes. He saw her visibly swallow, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips and Jess was caught in his own moment of flight before she drew out her hand and plucked the mug away from his lips.

“I’m not paying for that now.” She said, her voice low but teasing as a twinkle returned to her eye and they moved back to the book before her.

Jess cleared his throat, standing up and away from Rory, “When do you ever?” He quipped back, “Give Ernest my best.” He announced before he grabbed the clean rag from the counter and moved to put as much distance between them as possible.


End file.
